


No Death Could Conquer You

by Erradianwhocantread



Series: And Death Shall Have No Dominion [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, F/F, Gen, Mentions of Violence, Rule 63, Unreliable Narrator, mentions of torture, trans lady beren erchamion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-03-22 17:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13768728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erradianwhocantread/pseuds/Erradianwhocantread
Summary: High King Fingon was captured alive at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Maedhros is determined to free her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Maedhros, Fingon, Maglor, Curufin, and Caranthir are rule 63'd. If you don't like rule 63, please go read something you will like instead. Celegorm and Amras are still dudes.
> 
> 2)There's some descriptions (not much) of gore/violence/torture, and trauma. There will be more, and more explicit, ones, as this goes on. The rating will probably change with future chapters. 
> 
> 3) Thanks for Fidelishaereticus for ranting about hcs and this au with me! Feel free to let me know what you think of this in the comments.

It would have been better if Fingon had died. It would have been better for them both. If only she could realize that, if only she could stop fighting, stop enduring, stop  _ hoping _ . She must know by now, after nine years of the sun and with the magnitude of their defeat, that no rescue would come. And yet, day after day, Maedhros wished for that sick snap of their bond that would signal her departure to the kinder imprisonment of Mandos, and day after day she was disappointed. And daily it grew harder to endure what she could feel of Fingon’s state. For months after their defeat, Maedhros had had nor time nor energy to mourn or rage for the cruel fate of her beloved, or to let her own guilt sink its fangs into her neck. It had taken months for she and her siblings to lead the remnants of their people to safety in the eastern forests of Thargelion. She’d been fool enough to let everything hit at once after that. It had been months more before she came back to herself, nigh three years before she could manage without Maglor numbing her marriage bond. She had thought, foolishly, that with time she would grow accustomed to the shadow of Fingon’s suffering, or that the knowledge that there was no way to alleviate it would somehow enure her to it. 

Nine years of the sun her beloved and her king had languished in the pits of Angband, and daily it grew more impossible to bear, more impossible to separate Fingon’s own weakening from her own. Fingon’s captivity tormented her in her sleep (seldom though that came to her) like hunger pangs, dogged her in her waking hours like the itch of her lost hand. It burned hotter in her mind than her Oath, and it was equally beyond her. Their forces were scattered and broken, in a constant state of retreat. Their best hope for breaking those vast dungeons open had perished with the better part of their armies on the field that day. And only Fingon had ever successfully mounted a rescue. Maedhros had not made obeisance to any of the Powers since she’d trod in Finwe’s brains. She had prayed daily to the Lord of Mandos for the past nine years to end Fingon’s torment, to Nienna to have pity and intercede on their behalf with her cold brother. Only silence ever answered her. If she had ever come to doubt that the difference in cruelty between Melkor and his siblings was one of semantics rather than magnitude, she doubted no longer.

Nine years, and Fingon had spit in the face of every opportunity she had had to flee in death, had clawed her way back to life in defiance. Nine years, and Maedhros found she was glad of it. It would be an insult to everything the High King stood for if she were to die after long subjugation in the dungeons of the Enemy, a shadow of what she had been. And yet die she would, and before much longer, if they did not abate their violence. After nine years of longing for Fingon’s death, Maedhros found her spirit recoiled at the prospect more than it had at anything. And yet there was nothing she could do. There was no way in that did not lead to her own captivity.

Their hopes for recovering the Silmarils were equally bleak, and yet that did nothing to stop Celegorm from grumbling, once they’d settled into a routine in this wild place, about the one in Thingol’s possession, about the audacity of his keeping it from them, the insult his daughter had done them, how they must be avenged. Maedhros had paid little heed to his ranting, or to Maglor reminding him that it was he that had insulted Luthien, waylaying her on her errand. She was sick and dizzy from whatever they’d done to Fingon this time. She could barely tear her mind away from the problem of her beloved’s captivity (her fault, her fault) enough to perform her duties to what little remained of their people. She had little patience for her wayward brother.

If their positions were reversed, Maedhros told herself, it would be the same. Had she not endured thirty years without hope, and had she not been prepared to endure thirty thousand more in defiance if it came to that? The thought shamed her even as it came into her mind, lying on the hard planks of her flet and staring, unsleeping, at the cold stars above. If their positions were reversed, Fingon would come for her, though she were kept in the deepest dungeon, one way or another, she would free her. She had. She traced the lines of Telumendil with her eyes. She and Fingon had gazed at it together, on the seaward slopes of the Pelori, hiding from their families. It had graced their second joining in Beleriand. Ereinion they had made under its light. The stars were not visible in Angband, even above ground. Somewhere nearby a nightingale was singing. Its song picked at her, like the weight her failure picked at her. Exhaustion had sunk deep into her bones, and yet she could find no rest, damn the bird. She pawed around haphazardly until her hand lighted upon the pile of wool recently gathered in a raid on Ulfang’s accursed people. She pulled a tuft off and rolled it between her fingers into a tight wad that she shoved into one ear, and then repeated the process for the other. If she could not blot out Fingon, at least she could blot out the bird. She curled about the wool, her hair mingling with it and shielding her from the merciless gaze of the stars.

Gasping, Maedhros shot upright as her eyes flew open. The moon had sunk beneath the horizon, but no grey smudged the eastern horizon to herald the dawn. Her hand shook as she pulled the wool out of her ears. The nightingale had quieted, but that was no matter. How,  _ how  _ had she been so stupid, how had it taken her  _ this  _ long… And yet the likelihood of it succeeding was so vastly less than Fingon’s harebrained gamble on her own rescue, and had not her own meticulous, fool-proof, carefully orchestrated, perfect plan turned to ash and ash so recently? And had not Fingon come for her, against all hope and all reason, and had not she succeeded? There was not even a guarantee that the old ways would avail her, and this would mean betrayal of her siblings, possibly of her Oath, it was mad… Yet Fingon had done no less for her.

She could not simply fly their camp. The thought of her siblings finding her, inexplicably, gone made her shudder. She had heard what had happened amongst them after her capture, and Celegorm and Curufin were more bent on blood this time, and Maglor and Caranthir weaker. No, she could not simply disappear into the night. When Fingon had done so, she had been one prince among many, her absence grieved but hardly detrimental to functionality. Maedhros had never had that luxury. Careful preparations would be necessary to ensure that her siblings didn’t break into factions and slay each other in her possibly permanent absence. She knew, though they thought she didn’t, that they had come close enough during her convalescence, and she would not have them do Morgoth’s work for him. And she would need information that would be difficult to come by. 

Most importantly, Fingon must know nothing of her plans. Maedhros knew better than any that if Morgoth or his twice despicable lackey decide to interrogate, the only sure defense was ignorance. Should her beloved glimpse even the barest shred of her determination, all might be lost. Maedhros had dreamed often enough in the short centuries of peace of them using Fingon to bait her. She would not allow those dreams to be prophetic. She took a long breath of the sharp air, tasting pine and darkness. It felt cruel, it felt wrong, her whole being revolted at it, but it was necessary before she even began to think on how she would accomplish this. But surely,  _ surely, _ if there was any time Fingon needed her love, her warmth, the knowledge that she still breathed free, reassurances that her captivity would not be forever, it was now. Surely now, if ever, was the time for mercy to temper cold pragmatism. 

Mercy it had been that had set Melkor at large to work his evil upon the world. Mercy had thrown itself to weep at the feet of blackened timber, and left the living to their fate. And so long as that fiend poisoned the circles of the world with his presence, mercy would quicker be bent to the service of evil than its original purpose. Fingon was strong. She had made it this long without hope. She could endure. Maedhros hardened her resolve and shut every door to her mind, turned the keys, bolted the locks, pulled up the bridge, as she had long ago learned to do. As  _ that creature _ had taught her to do. Let its lesson in callousness be its undoing. Fingon would know she lived, but no more. Anything more could give her away.

Dawn came slow and reluctant, low clouds that had moved in in the small hours fading from ink to slate. With it came doubt and lethargy and worse. Maedhros made no preparations that day. Nor the day after, nor the day after. How could she ever,  _ ever  _ hope to do this, when she could barely rouse herself, barely see to the mundane daily tasks of her people’s survival, barely draw air into her lungs? If it hadn’t been for their dark bargain, taken in rash foolishness, she, Caranthir, probably Amras, would be well dead. Someone so weak-willed could never begin to accomplish the beyond-impossible. For the millionth time, she allowed herself to be consumed by the knowledge that Fingon deserved better, her people deserved better, her siblings deserved better, and her father’s legacy deserved better, than her. How many Quendi who had fought tooth and nail to stay alive, to keep their spirits knitted to their bodies, now waited in Mandos’ bleak halls? And yet she, who had longed for death, begged for it, tried again and again to find death in the soft blanket of despair and on countless battlefields, yet lived. She deserved her freedom from Namo’s captivity as much as she did her freedom from Morgoth’s. What was the point of making preparations when the words of the Doom, that all that they began well should turn to ill, had been so finally proven on the day that was now called Nirnaeth Arnoediad?

And yet.

And yet.

And yet.

And yet, and yet and yet, she was Fingon’s best hope. Her only hope. As Fingon had been hers, against doom, against certainty, against reason, against all possibility. 

And yet: not so. For Maedhros had been utterly without hope. She had spat defiance for thirty years of the sun, totally convinced that she would live or die there, and only there, as her captors pleased. Her best and only hope, in all that time, even when Fingon had materialized below her, had been that she would be allowed to die.  _ Why  _ the voice she had first encountered in Angband needled,  _ should Fingon have better _ ? The question was so ludicrous she could scarce believe it had crept into her head. The ways in which Fingon was so much more deserving of the mercy she had been shown were as self-evident as up and down. 

As the days continued to slip from Maedhros’ grasp in flurries of mundane requirements which left her drained and hazy, Telumendil gazed implacably down upon her at night, refusing her rest, refusing her the comfort of an easy escape. She had not sworn in this, and she could not even accomplish that which she had sworn to. She had not sworn to this, as she had not sworn to keep her body nourished, yet it was no less necessary than eating, and tormented no less fiercely than hunger. And there was comfort in it, that she had not sworn, for she could not break any oath she had not made. And might it not be well, for the first time since before the rising of the sun, to strive for something that she was not sworn to do, to strive only for love?

Maedhros began her preparations for departure incrementally. She must find out where she must first seek, and the information was carefully guarded. Though many among the Laiquendi were now become their friends, their reputation and the deeds of her siblings were not forgotten. Such knowledge was scarce among them, closely guarded from all unknown and unwary, and closer guarded from Feanorians. But it was not so difficult to reverse-engineer persuasive interrogation tactics, easier still to do no harm of any sort to those she questioned. By artful questions, pretended knowledge, and persuasive lies, she managed, after a long month, to get what she sought. 

Now the harder part began. Maedhros viewed the prospect of leaving her siblings with trepidation and distaste. She did not trust them, in her absence, not to fracture the fragile alliance they’d built with their Laiquendi hosts, not to plot some course of exceeding rashness at the first sign of danger and scatter and lose their people and their hopes even more than now, and more than necessary. She did not trust them not to turn on each other, and one or two she did not wholly trust to not turn on themselves. And yet leave them she must. She could comfort herself that this time, this time she could prepare them. This time she need not be suddenly snatched away from them with no warning, a cruel and devastating loss heaped upon a crueler loss. Maglor’s indecisiveness and aversion to leadership, Celegorm’s rash cowardice and bullying, Caranthir’s despair and penchant for picking fights, Curufin’s delight at cutting the rest of them to pieces with words and her wily cunning, and Amras’s malignant grudge against them all and unquenched rage must all be carefully accounted for. Caranthir she could trust to be shrewd, Maglor to be slow to any course which could not be reversed, and the two together skilled at building the relationships they would need if they were to survive. And she could trust Celegorm to grow steadily more restless as the Enemy hounded them further, to push, with his perverse eloquence, to some mad course, and she could trust Curufin to back him, and Maglor and the rest to either fall under their spell or have no power to stay them. She could trust Celegorm to throw any order or advice she might give him to the side the second he believed her killed or captured beyond hope, and in a terror that looked like courage to leap wildly in the opposite direction of all wisdom.

But she could not leave until she could trust that they would be well without her, and leave she must. Where Celegorm had all the power and reactive passion of their father, Maedhros had learned, first in Finwe’s halls, and later in Morgoth’s, the trick of getting others to go against their own will and instead follow hers without realizing. And so she explained to Celegorm conspiratorially that she must go away, and that she did not expect to return, but that she feared for them, considering Maglor’s gentle nature. Should any crisis befall them, or should the Enemy draw his nets slowly and steadily round them, she feared Maglor would be unable to act decisively and see them to safety. Celegorm agreed with her, scoffing and sneering as he let her know without restraint his opinion of their sister. As if this was something Maedhros did not already know. Maedhros confided that, if such a catastrophe were to find them while she was still here, her inclination, and here she paused to let him know that she scarcely dared tell him this, as it was so bold she doubted any would agree it was wisdom, would be to gather those they could and make directly for the borders of Doriath. There they would offer themselves as hostages in return for their people’s safe admission into the guarded realm. Celegorm had choicer words for Elu Thingol than he’d had for their sister. But Maedhros pressed on, adding that it could be no more difficult to overawe than the entire population of Nargothrond, that this way they might come into possession of one Silmaril without bloodshed or risk, and at the same stroke gain an alliance that would put the other two once more within their grasp. Celegorm, predictably, had warmed to having his talents praised, and to the idea of swaying all of Menegroth to his side. Maedhros had left satisfied (as much as she could be with her unpredictable brother) that, should disaster strike, he would lead their people to safety, and himself and their siblings to a place where they could do no immediate harm. 

Maglor tried for hours to persuade her against trying to free Fingon. As always, she beat her arguments out against the mountainside of Maedhros’ stubbornness and relented with many a reminder that she still thought this dangerous folly. Maedhros gave her thorough instructions of what she was to do and what the rest of them were to do in any eventuality. She trusted Maglor not to dare to improvise. Parting from Caranthir and Amras was a miserable, wrenching business, and Maedhros knew that, if she should die in this attempt, they would be her last regret. It was hard knowledge to bear, but she could not say it was harder than the knowledge that she had condemned her beloved to death on the Ice. Curufin said little when Maedhros came to her to explain that she was going, and nothing when she took her final leave of all of them.  

They had all agreed that those outside the family would know only that she was going to seek an alliance with any who might live east of the Ered Luin, and that she should depart in relative secret, and alone. Wet heavy clouds hid the dawn, and the dark leaves of late summer dripped onto moss and loam and brush as she stood with her siblings just outside their camp. Only Curufin did not shed tears and embrace her and chide her or offer advice or wish her luck. It felt wrong, to be going off alone, with only provisions and a hunting knife, clad in the green and brown of their hosts rather than stout armor and star-blazoned scarlet. It felt wrong leaving her siblings after she had led them to such defeat. But her way lay forward, regardless of her feelings and her misgivings. Maedhros took a last look back at her siblings before she disappeared like a shadow into the dense woods, and made for the river Adurant. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maedhros makes the first leg of her journey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a) sorry this took forever  
> b) some trauma-responses here, but nothing particularly graphic

Maedhros had not reckoned on how wide eastern Beleriand was, nor how treacherous its forests, nor how difficult she would find being alone. She had forgotten, somehow (foolish) that she had not spent extended time in solitude since it had been forced upon her. And in doing so she had forgotten, also, that long and true solitude was not natural for her kind. She had been through Thargelion, through Ossiriand, through this whole bleeding continent multiple times and it had not seemed near so interminable. But then of course those times she had had company. Fingon, or Maglor, or Finrod, or others. The leaves on the slopes of the Blue Mountains were beginning to turn and she had yet to find her way across the Ascar. 

It was all wrong, that it would take an Elf this long to find her way through a wood, even if she was travelling against the grain of the mountains. If she didn’t know better she’d think the land itself was intent on barring her way. Trying to push south was impossible. Gullies opened before her, and if she tried in her stubbornness to cut straight through them anyway, she invariably found them full of close-growing thorn-bushes. She’d landed in five wild-rose thickets that were almost thick enough to bear her entire weight and lost her cloak, her provisions, and all told at least three days before she’d taken the hint. Trees dropped branches directly in front of her or pushed roots out of the ground to trip her, and the two times she could fight sleep no longer and relented to sleeping in their boughs, she would awake with lurching horror to find that this was no mere dream of falling just before she collided with the ground. She gave up on sleeping entirely after her head had landed a hair's-breadth from a stone. 

The forests of Ossiriand were pushing her eastward, into the arms of the mountains, away from her target, away from her only chance at helping Fingon, away from the last uncorrupted motive she had left to her. After nearly two weeks of fruitless wandering alone, she could swear the trees were whispering, that she could hear them, that they spoke of her, that they were hostile. She half-believed they had been swayed to Morgoth’s side. Was this what her cousin had felt like, wandering in Nan Elmoth, alone, confounded, disoriented,  _ hunted _ ? Was it the will of some other, besides the enemy, one of their own who had become twisted and strange, that thwarted her, drove her ever east? And was that possibility better or worse than that Morgoth had corrupted this vast forest?

If she died before she reached her target, no one would find her. Her siblings might learn of her fate, or they might not. She had kept her mind so close since she’d resolved to take this course of madness that she couldn’t say whether they would feel it if she died. Her corpse would lie in the open, food for wild beasts or for the trees which menaced all round. And suppose one of the Laiquendi did find her. Would they know who they had found? She had no distinguishing marks about her, and she was hardly the only Elf to lose her right hand in this war. And if she died, and in her last months she had done everything she could to cut herself off from Fingon, and she had squandered the last chance she’d ever have to rest her mind against her beloved’s, to give her comfort and love, to feel her, even like this, to say farewell… Suppose she died, and traded one stuffy solitude for another, the next one permanent?

The only advantage of being pushed east was that the rivers became narrower as she neared their sources. But narrower did not mean easy. The water was frigid and the current fierce, the rolling rocks on their beds coated in algae. She had lost her rope with much of her gear down a gully weeks (she thought, though time was becoming difficult to track) earlier, and hadn’t been able to use a bow since her rescue. A stone had rolled out from under her foot as she forded Thalos, and she’d been pulled under. It took her the better part of the day to free herself from the angry current. Swimming through rapids was no mean feat for one missing half an arm. Every time the roiling flood pulled her under and held her there visions of Ulmo and Uinen and Osse in their wrath shaped and unshaped themselves before her eyes, and in the roaring water she heard the wailing of the Teleri at the docks. The bruises she suffered from that buffeting were annoying, but hardly as dire as the absolute loss of her weybread. 

Foraging was tedious work and added a week to her push south to Legolin. Despite the bounty the season should have afforded, she couldn’t find a bush that deer or rodents hadn’t beaten her to. She suspected the trees were alerting the beasts to her presence and traps. Their whispers were unmistakable now, sometimes “Nelya,” sometimes “Maitimo” sighed and rustled between the birches and elms. When had she given them her name? She hadn’t been this hungry since the Mountain. Was Fingon hungry, she wondered while gazing up at the dark shapes of waving leaves silhouetted against the stars. Were they starving her? Captives were not, as a rule, well fed, but those who were put to hard labor were not starved. It had seemed, from the glimpses Maedhros had allowed herself before she’d closed her mind off to go on this goose-chase, that they’d put Fingon to hard labor, so they probably weren’t starving her. She remembered how gaunt Fingon had been, fresh from the horrors of the Grinding Ice, how ill she had looked. Did she look like that now? 

Hunger gnawed at Maedhros’s stomach, guilt and anxiety gnawed at her mind, and she had to admit that she could go no further without rest. She took shelter beneath a sleepy looking ancient oak. A root dug into her back, but the other trees were far too awake and far too malevolent to risk bedding down under them. She would not sleep this night, despite not remembering how many suns she had seen since she had last slept. She should get up, move on. The night air was crisp with the coming of autumn, pleasantly damp. There would be a heavy dew when the sun rose. She could give the trap she’d set earlier more time to catch something, but it wouldn’t. She already knew that. The trees were whispering, passing sneering gossip about her all over the forest, leaving no resident unwarry. Maedhros scowled up at them. Perhaps it wasn’t Morgoth or any twisted Elf. The Shepherds were Yavanna’s work. The Trees had been Yavanna’s work. Feanor had denied her the ability to restore them to life even before they knew the full extent of what Morgoth had done. Now it made sense. This malice she felt was not corruption or enchantment, but Yavanna’s wrath. She cursed her and threw a pebble at the nearest looming trunk. A shiver went through the trees around her, and they seemed to loom closer. Maedhros had not cracked before the Mighty Arising. She would not do so before the emissaries of its less potent sibling. 

A few hours before dawn, as the birds changed shifts (surely confederates with the trees in the conspiracy against her, though whether their allegiance was to Manwe or to Morgoth, she couldn’t guess), Maedhros arose and turned east. The forest wanted her to try her luck in the mountains, so be it. It would suit her purposes just as well to come at her target this way, and with the forest so intent on hindering her it wouldn’t add considerable time. East and north: let the trees think she’d given up. Legolin would supply her with fish and cress and a clean path. Predictably, she found her way no longer blocked. Did these trees know, she wondered, how long she had been their protector, how long her watch on the marches had kept their forest unsullied by marauding orcs? Did they care? She reached the river before gray had kissed the dark tips of the mountains. The stars shimmered in the cold rushing water as it roared and tossed in its bed, throwing up foam here and there. It sounded too like the river in Mithrim, looked too like the river in Mithrim, where she had lain with Fingon, their heads and their minds resting against each other, relearning what contentedness felt like. 

Pushing the thought from her mind, she trudged on. Dawn crept down through the leaves and boughs as she struggled through springing thickets of rhododendron and laurel, breaking branches in her frustration at what ought to have been a simple task (this all ought to have been so simple, but there were other forces, always other and more powerful and unfriendly forces, thwarting their way forward). It was not yet noon when her exhaustion won out over her panic and her determination. The bank beside the river was flat and covered in soft grass and clover, the sun shone invitingly down upon it as if to reassure her she would be safe there, and small lavender butterflies flitted about the black mud and mint flowers further down by the laughing water. She would be exposed here, for all that she would be out of the shadow of the trees, and for all the seeming peace, enemies could lurk anywhere. But it was either this or sleepwalk.

The grass was soft and sweet-smelling, the sun warm and friendly, and Maedhros slept more soundly than she had since she’d stopped letting Maglor numb her to sleep. She dreamed herself in her father’s forge, before she had known what trouble was. When she woke, refreshed and with a butterfly sitting on her nose, it was late afternoon and the heat of the sun had become uncomfortable. She rose and sat on the edge of the bank with her feet in the cold water. Everything seemed sharper at this time of day, with its deep blue sky, as if the impending lack of light forced clarity on the world. The trees were not her enemies, nor were the birds or the waters or the beasts of the wood. The difficulties she’d had to this point could as easily be explained by the fraying of her own mind than a conspiracy of flora. Had she not seen Aegnor suffer a similar madness during a heavy snow in Ard Galen? She sighed heavily and put her head in her hand as the water rushed about her feet. She had been a fool to think she could traverse eastern Beleriand alone, though it would have been more foolish to trust another with her purpose.

A harsh cry broke her reverie. It was unmistakably a crow in distress. The poor bird was struggling piteously in the current, fighting in vain to gain the bank. Without thinking Maedhros stood and scooped it from the water. The bird panicked, pecking, kicking, and flapping frantically, but she held it firm. “You are safe, no one is going to harm you. Rest and be still,” she told it. Her voice sounded as harsh as the bird’s croak from such long disuse. The bird’s right wing was grievously injured. Maedhros returned to the bank, cradling the bird and rasping words of comfort. The sun had nearly set by the time she finished tending the crow’s wing. Legolin giggled in its rocky bed, self-satisfied. Maedhros could have wept with gratitude. She would not have to finish this journey alone. She named the bird Siranna. It nested in the crook of her arm that night, warm and close. Maedhros made them a breakfast of water plants and fish and fashioned a sling to carry her new companion close while its wing healed.

As she fussed about the crow, stroking its head and throat with the back of her fingers and feeding it by hand, she could practically hear her siblings in her head, universally disapproving. Crows, everyone knew, were a corruption of the enemy, no more trustworthy than wolves. As the chastisements flowed through her mind, the crow’s eyes met hers, large and sorrowful with gratitude, trusting and yet shocked at this show of kindness, and Maedhros burst into tears. For was she not also a corruption? Could she claim to be any more trustworthy, and had she been any more deserving of kindness and mercy than this crow? And had both of them not had corruption thrust upon them, regardless of their own wills?

The upper reaches of Legolin were lush and sparkling, and soon would be a riot of color broken by grey fog. It was a pleasant change from the mad flight through the forests of Ossiriand from Caranthir’s land. Maedhros found her memory of that journey pitted and smeared, more like the memory of a nightmare than of yesterday. She petted Siranna’s throat, and the crow burbled contentedly in response. At least she would no longer be alone, and that madness was behind her. The bird new none of the languages of elves or men or orcs, but that did not prevent it from being an excellent conversationalist. 

“Do you think there is any hope in this?” Maedhros asked her companion on the third day of their acquaintance, after she had thoroughly explained her plan.

Siranna chirrupped in the unlovely manner of her kind.

“I cannot say either. Do you know that you and I might be the only two proofs that the corruption of the enemy can be undone? By you I of course mean crows generally. By rights we ought both to be Morgoth’s creatures.”

Siranna gave an angry caw.

“Yes. Perish the thought. I know what saved me from that fate, but what of you?”

Siranna grumbled and fidgeted in her sling. 

“Of course. It is contrary to your nature. I once thought it was contrary to mine. The Atani are of the opinion that your kind are all creatures of Morgoth’s corruption. They refuse to believe that there are ravens across the sea, that they eat there as crows eat here.”

Their speech together ranged like that from the philosophical to the deeply personal to the totally inane. And yet it was a comfort, to have someone to care for, someone to listen and to make their own needs and opinions known, to force her to eat and to rest. Siranna resisted learning to speak even a word of Sindarin, but Maedhros suspected this was pure stubbornness. Perhaps, she speculated aloud, the crow would be more susceptible to Quenya, or perhaps this was its own way of resisting the Enemy. It could not report back words in a language it did not speak.

Fall was in its full crescendo by the time the arrived at the upper reaches of the Brilthor, but Maedhros could not admire it. The flaming leaves served as a reminder that her beloved had languished for another season in the pits of the Enemy, that her people had dwindled and suffered another year, that they were one year further into the long count of their ultimate defeat. The rippling reds and oranges waving in the fog that draped the slopes of the Ered Luin wavered in the corners of her eyes, mixed with the distant scent of smoke from the burnings of the Orcs and campfires of Atani, blew memories before her eyes of fires, fires on the dark shore of this godforsaken land, fires ravaging Ard Galen, fires engulfing her father, fires surrounding her in captivity. 

The walk to the sources of Duilwen was quick and almost pleasant. Siranna’s wing was healing well, and though the crow stubbornly refused to pronounce a single word in a language not its own, their talks continued to deepen. “You might be the only thing which my father, Elu Thingol, Caranthir, and my Arafinwean cousins could agree upon, for I’m sure they’d all think your insistence on speaking only own tongue quite admirable,” Maedhros told her once in gentle exasperation. Siranna preened at what she clearly understood as a compliment. “Have you children?” Maedhros asked, changing the subject. Ereinion had been on her mind lately, and a muffled part of her mind drummed day and night with the doubt that her time and efforts would have been better spent going west, that Fingon would, if given a choice, prefer Maedhros rescue their child, rather than her. But Fingon had no choices, and would not unless Maedhros freed her, and Ereinion’s safety was best served by her absence. 

“Caw,” said Siranna.

“I have a daughter, but I had to leave her long ago when she was still very young. I doubt she even misses me anymore.”

“Caw,” said Siranna.

“My sister finds me monstrous for leaving her. Abandoning, she terms it, unnatural, to do aught other than fly to her defense or order her to me in these dark times. Do you find me monstrous?

“Caw,” said Siranna.

“I maintain that her best chance is in my staying as far away from her as possible. Curvo cannot understand this because it would require her to admit we are tainted and that taint rubs off on all we touch, and I think, between you and I, that she would sooner submit to Morgoth than entertain that notion.”

“Caw,” said Siranna.

“You’re right,” said Maedhros ruefully, “I’m being too harsh on her. And too generous to myself. Doubtful I would have been willing to admit such had I not been faced with that exact choice. Bad luck on my part does not superior morality make.”

The sources of the Adurant burbled and frothed over shiny smooth stones in myriad browns and oranges and blues, the bright fallen leaves swept haphazardly along. Maedhros estimated she could close the distance to her target with four days hard travel. The terrain was much friendlier in the southern reaches of the Blue Mountains, though the vegetation was thicker. Rolling foothills were much easier to traverse than the sharp rock-strewn crags of the north. The morning of the third day she woke at the first greying of the damp sky to find her companion gone. In the near distance she could see the shadow-shape of Siranna, a grey smudge on a grey sky, her wing healed. Maedhros watched the crow, wondering if it really was a crow at all, wondering how far north it intended to journey. Manwe was not the only one who spoke the languages of birds. She shook herself. She was too committed to turn back now, whether she was compromised or no. And so she set off, at a reckless pace, paying no heed to the extraneous details of her surroundings or the needs of her own body. It was as if she were racing the sun, and of course she lost. But she sped on.

The sickle of the moon was yellowed and swinging at a drunken angle perilously close to the grasping fingers of the treetops when she reached the far bank of Tol Galen. She should wait the few hours til dawn. She looked less fearsome in the dawn. Her coming would seem fairer in the dawn. But delay served the Enemy to the north and the Doomsman to the west, and she would delay no longer. The water was deep and swift and chill, but she would not be turned aside, and she had endured worse buffetings than any mere river could offer. Immediately upon reaching the shore, she was hit doubly, once with a magnetism the nauseating strength of which she’d forgotten, once with a power that made her spirit tilt within her and felt to her face like the force of a too-hot flame. She waited, let it wash over her, and then pushed on. 

The island was strange, and did not behave entirely like an island of this middle earth should, but her footing had been tested in stranger places, and the insistent tug on her mind kept her from losing her way. The moon was gone into the secret ways beneath the earth, chasing the sun, by the time she found the house, built after the fashion of the Beorings. Maedhros rapped on the door until its timbers sang “open up, in the name of the king!,” as she had long ago learned to do. She did not have to wait long for the latch to lift and the door to crack open slightly.

A face lightly touched by age and fusty with disturbed sleep and with confusion looked at her, and she could see the image she presented in the widening dark eyes: a high stern face disfigured with torment and frantic, crazed, the fairness beneath the scars and the manic energy making it all the more hideous and terrifying. Recognition of who she was fell over the face in the doorway before she could find the words “I come to ask your help, I mean no harm to you and yours,” and the features twisted in disgust and fear and anger. The door was closing, and with it the chances for Fingon’s liberty. Too fast to think, Maedhros thrust her right arm into the rapidly narrowing opening. The timbers closed hard on her metal hand, sending pain resonating from stump to shoulder. She yelped before she could stop herself. It was enough to startle the inhabitant, and Maedhros found her words. 

“Wait,” she commanded of Beren Erchamion, “I am not here for the jewel, but for help in a quest no less worthy or pure than that for which you sought assistance from Finrod Felegund. As you were not refused in your hour of need, do not refuse me in mine.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maedhros requests help from an unlikely source

Maedhros and Beren stared at each other as the river grumbled in its banks about them. The Atan had aged more harshly than their kind were wont, or perhaps it was, after the manner of the Quendi, that Death had not been kind to Beren’s spirit, and its ravages showed outwardly. The face before her was lined with scars and with age, grim, and yet it glowed with a light Maedhros wished was strange to her. The sight swam before her eyes, and the glow of another grim face in a different darkness, and the roar of different water wavered over the face in the door like water over sand in a lake. It shifted again, and the darkness deepened, the glow sharpened and burned…

The door came down hard on her false hand again. This time she pushed against it. Beren was strong, strong enough to subdue Curufin, but Maedhros was not Curufin. Rage and the drive to subdue lest she be subdued was building within her, and a part of her knew that everything and more rode on her ability to beat that impulse down.The door was open enough now for her to get a better look at her reluctant host. Beren’s body was not as she had expected it to be, and it struck her as particularly cruel of the lord of Mandos to undo with the gift of new life the gift that Felagund had bestowed in shaping the outward to match the inward. The implications of Beren’s missing hand fell into her understanding like a cold stone into a cold pool. Cruel was too kind a word for it.

The pressure of the door upon her false hand would become too much for the straps holding it or the arm they were lashed to or both soon. Words would not work, not alone. The distrust of her kin ran too deep, and rightfully so. She could command, plead, persuade, use all the mighty arts of speech at her disposal, and the mortal’s trust would not be moved. Words would not be enough by themselves, and so she must find another way to free Fingon, leave Fingon to her fate, or she must begin this trust herself, with herself. Her blood ran cold and her guts screamed  _ fly  _ as her limbs screamed  _ fight _ at the very thought. But she had had her mind bared to the Mighty Arising, and she had not quailed. She would not quail in the face of one aging mortal. Maedhros let the walls of adamant around her mind fall like drapes, let the knowledge of her beloved’s suffering, the weight of her debt, the love so deep it was almost despair for her captive king, and the thin, bright, desperate hope that had brought her here shine and ripple out from her eyes. “Please,” she said, “do not turn me away.”

As the urgency behind the words hit Beren, her face softened, but the pressure upon her hand did not. The touch of the woman’s mind on her own, even so light as this was, set crackles of nausea, terror, rage, and an awful compliance bursting like black stars behind Maedhros’s eyes. “Are you armed?” Beren asked in a voice gruff but not unkind. 

“A hunting knife in my belt,” answered Maedhros steadily.

Keeping the door barred with her body, Beren reached out with her good arm and took the knife. Maedhros balled her hand into a fist behind her back, digging her nails into her palm as hard as she could. This was necessary. This was for Fingon. This was not the same. It was not the same. She could, at any time, if she chose, overpower this mortal, could flee into the night. This was not the same. 

“I feel no deceit in you,” said Beren, “but you understand why I must take precautions?”

Maedhros nodded. “Of course. Were our positions reversed, I should do the same.”

Beren called into the house, “Put Dior to bed and bring rope, my love.”

This was necessary. This was for Fingon. There was no other way. This was her own choice. She could leave at any time. Maedhros repeated it like an incantation as her arms were bound tight to her body with strong knots. This was not the same. This would not last long. These two would not keep her bound and helpless in the dark for as long as they found it amusing. This was not the same. “You have a child,” she observed as Beren led her by the neck into the house and sat her upon a rough wooden stool. Beren looked at her sharply. Dior was no subject for conversation with a Feanorion, it would seem. Fair enough.

Inside the little house was a curious blend. The structure had clearly been built by Beren in the fashion of her own people, as had the bulk of the furnishings. The hangings and blankets however were as fine and as full of spirit as anything of her own grandmother’s. There were crude candles and a wood fire next to glowing moss and star-stones. Child’s toys peaked out from under chairs and overflowed baskets and herbs and flowers hung in bunches from the rafters. The feel of the pair suffused everything in the dwelling like the smell of baking bread. It was lovely beyond words in its quaint way, and yet the daughter of Elwe, an Ainu in her own right, contenting herself with it struck Maedhros as not a bit ridiculous. 

Beren sat across from her and did not speak. The fire light glinted off the mortal’s eyes. That was all it was, the glint of flame from a warm hearth on an iris. That was all. Her face was grim, but the lines at the corners of her eyes belied a life lived long in joy and in laughter. Had returning removed those outward scars from her spirit, or was it some wile of Luthien? Her hair was dark, though here brows and the stubble dusting her face shone silver. A door opened in the back of the house, and the light in the room changed. Maedhros broke their silence. “If it is not too much trouble, it would be better for all of us should the jewel be kept out of my sight, I think.” Beren’s gaze hardened and her lip curled almost imperceptibly at that, but the light retreated. A moment later Luthien entered the room. “I thank you, lady,” said Maedhros before the fairest of all the Eldar had come into her field of vision. There was a scrape of one of the wooden chairs being dragged across the floor boards, and a woman sat next to Beren. Maedhros nearly choked at the shock. This was not the fair-beyond-fair child of Melian her siblings had described, nor the star-haired nightingale or beauty fell as the Sea which the Ley spoke of. She was beautiful still, but her face was no less lined than her wife’s, her hair no less touched by the frost of age, and her form more resembled a hale and well-lived matron of the Beorings than it did an Elf. It made sense, of course. She had been rendered mortal. But it was Luthien the Ainu and enchantress whose help Maedhros had sought, not Luthien the mortal. “And my apologies for troubling you. I fear it may have been to no purpose.”

“Let us be the judge of that,” said Luthien, tilting her head like a bird. “Unfold your errand, sister of Celegorm.”

The epithet bit. “I am not my siblings, lady,” Maedhros corrected. “Their insult to you was beyond heinous.”

“And yet you kept their company,” observed Luthien.

Fair enough, and a misstep on her part. Maedhros tried to redirect. “As I told your wife, I have not come for the jewel, nor have I come on an errand concerning the other two. I have come alone, and I have submitted to being bound. I think that it is clear that, unlike my errant brother, I mean you no harm.”

“You said before your quest was similar to my own,” said Beren, suspicion clouding the edges of her voice, “and yet you say also it does not concern the jewels. How do you explain this prevarication, Feanorion?”

Maedhros smiled wryly. “I take it you have heard, either from my own kin or from your wife’s, that we are accomplished liars as well as murderers, rogues, and kidnappers?” It was a hazard, parrying accusations with the strong of the blade, rather than letting them land and yielding in a sympathetic pose, but a hazard that had served her well in the past. “I will own all that as true. Yet your sources report us only at our worst, and surely that is not a fair metric by which to judge one who comes to you as a supplicant.”

Beren grunted noncommittally.

“I employed no prevarication. Your quest involved the jewels, but you did not undertake it for their sake, but for the sake of your beloved. For such a reason have I undertaken mine. Word may have reached you in this charmed place of a grievous battle fought recently between the Noldor and the Morgoth. Twas I who persuaded our people to it, and we were destroyed. Many were taken captive, many more killed.”

“Due to the arrogance of the Feanorions and the treachery of the Easterlings, yes,” said Beren, frustrated. “But what has this to do with your beloved or why you have disturbed our home?”

“The High King and myself wedded long before the rising of the sun.” Maedhros had grown to enjoy the shock with which the revelation was met by those who did not know. “It was hardly a secret, though I can see why the two of you have been unaware.” She could talk about Fingon in the abstract. It was the distance that had allowed her to keep their secret in Valinor, to not lose her mind when she realized they were to be sundered, to survive the past nine years. But Fingon in the abstract would not secure her the help of her reluctant hosts, were they even able to give it. These were strangers, strangers who had disarmed her and tied her up and tried to catch her in a lie, and who had nearly killed her kin. They were strangers she was sworn to hate, and they dared to demand her guts, her pain, her ecstasy, and her madness as criteria to weigh her quest to determine if it merited their aid. It rankled, and she longed to menace them from her high seat in Himring, resplendent in her austere hall, her hair burnished and twisted about her head and her shoulders draped in heavy sable furs as she had many a mortal and many a Sinda and many times her own kin, to over-awe them into stammering apologies for their insolence. But that would not do here, and an attempt would have her looking the part they expected, the haughty and cunning Feanorion, as worthy of trust and compassion as the average weasel. It galled her, but it was necessary. “I owe her my life, my soul, my sanity. And she…” Maedhros let her voice grow thick and her eyes mist. Maglor would have chided her for being maudlin, but Maglor was not here and understood little of persuasion. “She is all that is good in me. Any light, any kindness, any hope in me I owe to her. She never did wrong but what I led her to, and though it flies in the face of my blood, I would aver that she is the epitome of what a Noldo ought to be. She is my beloved, my king, and my hope, and I have failed her in every way.” She allowed herself to be overwhelmed by the admission, allowed her hosts to sit in discomfort as their bound guest was overcome with guilt and grief. “She was taken captive at the battle. I could not save her. I despaired, for all our fine armies were not sufficient to dent that horrid gate, and none save Fingon herself has ever mounted a successful rescue. And somehow I doubt Manwe Sulimo would intercede on my behalf. You know,” she said, locking her eyes upon Beren’s, “you know as well as I what torment and what peril it is to be in the Enemy’s clutches.”

Beren shuddered and rubbed her arm. “I do.” She rose and circled around Maedhros. Her bound limbs and the precarity of the rough stool kept her from following with her eyes. She felt the pressure of the other’s stump at her back and tensed. This was not the same. These were good people. But then she herself was not good, any more than her shrewd sister, and this one had nearly done for her. It would be right. She felt a pull at the knot and the rope loosen and fall from her limbs. To her shame a ragged and puffy breath forced itself out of her, and she doubted she hid the relief in her face any better. “You have trusted us beyond any reasonable expectation of a former captive. As one captive to another, I think it only just to meet trust with trust.” Beren returned to her seat. Maedhros decided she liked the kindness in the mortal woman’s eyes far less than the suspicion and anger which they had previously worn. “All I asked was that you unfold your purpose. You needn’t have bared yourself.”

Maedhros bit back a grumble of “you might have stopped me then,” and instead thanked her host as graciously and genteely as the eldest grandchild of the first High King of the Noldor could. “Only three have ever passed into Angband of their own volition and returned free out of it with what they sought,” she said, resuming her accustomed dignity. “Fingon, who is herself now captivate, and yourselves. I would be the fourth, for her sake, and so I have come to seek your aid.”

Luthien, who had kept her strange eyes fixed and unchanging on Maedhros since she entered the room, laughed. It was not a cruel laugh, or at least it was not meant to be. Maedhros was hardly unfamiliar with the amusement the Powers would find in the requests of the Eruhini that only showed themselves absurd if one had infinitely greater knowledge. She had made it a point herself never to laugh at Ereinion’s childish requests that she ask the clouds not to cover the moon at night. “It is strange. I receive a fair and good request from a Feanorion, and I can no more grant it than I could the sinister one. And it is strange, that when I am forbidden to assist assailing Angband for an ill and selfish purpose, to bring a jewel back as a trophy, I am capable. But when asked to help rescue one who merits it, I am not.” She sobered as suddenly as she had laughed. “I am sorry, Feanorion,” she said, “but I am now only as you see me: a mortal woman, capable of no more nor less than any other mortal woman. I cannot throw ope the dungeons, nor cloak you in the raiment of a demon, nor put the guards to sleep, nor dance the Morgoth into a trance, as I once did.”

Maedhros nodded and rose. “Then I am sorry to have troubled you. Thank you. You gave hope to our people in the darkness, and you have been most generous to one whom you owe nought but resentment and wariness. I will leave you now to your well-earned peace.”

“Sit,” said Beren. “Please. We will not turn you out into the night.”

Maedhros smiled and bowed. “I thank you, lady, but I think it is… safest, for everyone, if I do not pass any more time than necessary under the same roof as your treasure.” While she had Fingon and the hope of freeing Fingon to focus on, Maedhros could keep the flaying magnetism of the Oath to the back of her mind. Now that hope was doused, she would not vouch for her ability to resist it.

“I see then it is a common trait of your kin to give up easily,” Beren quipped.

“If that is what you would call half a mortal lifetime of spitting in the face of the Moringotto himself, then that is your choice.” said Maedhros tightly. She had not come here to argue with fools.

“It is what I would call running off into the night in defeat at the first hurdle,” said Beren. This mortal truly had more gall than any of Eru’s other creations. 

“And what would you have me do?” asked Maedhros, her voice measured and steely. Her growing rage was fanning the ever-burning Oath within her, and she doubted very much that these two understood the peril of this baiting. “Scale the Mountains of Shadow alone, perhaps with a bow and a harp? Climb Thangorodrim and beg the Powers for mercy in my hour of need?”

“No,” said Beren. “But I never counted on the gifts of Luthien to fulfill her father’s request.” 

“And yet without them you would have failed,” Maedhros reminded her.

“Perhaps,” said Beren, “But originally Felagund had planned for us to gain entry by way of a glamor.” 

“And unless I am very much mistaken, that ended in my cousin having their fair throat ripped out by a werewolf while chained in a pit.”

Beren grimaced. “It was not Felagund’s glamor that failed. It was that we knew not how to mimic the behavior of the Orcs.”

Of course. Maedhros had always assumed it was the cunning of that vile lieutenant that had pierced Finrod’s disguises. But beyond acting like an Orc, which not only would Finrod not have known, Maedhros doubted they would have been able to bring themselves to, Finrod would have had no way of knowing the particular protocols that the Morgoth’s paranoia required, and their knowledge of the Black Speech had been conversational at best. But Maedhros herself was a different story. She returned to her seat. “And you are supposing, had they been able to properly impersonate an Orc, and not merely appear as one, it would have succeeded.”

Beren shrugged. “It would have gotten us in. We never worked out the details of how to gain the crown.”

It was not the crown Maedhros needed access to. Prisoners were not so well guarded, and an Orc taking one from the pack and marching them off to some private punishment would raise no alarm, even if the prisoner in question were a particular favorite. “What was the mechanism for the glamor?”

Beren gave her a blank look. “I… it was an enchantment.”

“Yes?” 

“I thought, being wise and learned as Felagund and being close kin, you would know it…”

Maedhros stared hard at the rafters above her. She could have laughed. She could have smashed everything in the cottage to bits. She closed her eyes and drew a long breath. “So you are telling me,” she said slowly, “that not only is the only one to ever triumph over the Morgoth in his own chamber now bereft of her powers, but on top of that, the one who might have secured me entrance into Angband is dead?” At least her hosts had the decency to look pained. “And I suppose I have no one to blame but myself for not keeping my siblings in check.” 

“The cloaks I weave have lost none of their power, though all the rest of my arts are faded,” offered Luthien. “You may take one, and perhaps it will shield you enough--”

“Spare me your pity, lady, please.” The fire crackled in the hearth, and Maedhros became aware of how deeply, deeply weary she was. She rose again, with effort more befitting an aged mortal than one of her own kind, and again turned to go. 

This time it was Luthien that stopped her. “The glamor that Beren speaks of, such arts are the specialty of my mother, who taught those of your cousins that would learn when they sojourned with us. And Felagund was not her best pupil.”

“You speak of Artanis, who now calls herself Galadriel?” If she meant either one of the twins Maedhros fully intended to cast herself in the river in despair and frustration and let Ulmo bear her where he might. 

“I do,” said Luthien, “and I believe she dwells still in my old home. If it is illusion you seek, she may be able to aid you where we cannot. And should you choose to seek her there, a cloak of mine to signify our friendship might aid you with my father. You see, I do not offer it in pity.”

“No, you speak in riddles after the manner of your kind.”

“And yours,” added Beren.

Maedhros ignored her. “I can neither deserve nor repay your generosity in this, my lady Luthien.”

Luthien smiled. “You need do neither, my lord Maedhros of the Golodhrim,” she said as she handed Maedhros a fine dark cloak. “May you find the one you seek and bring her safe away.”

“I should not stay longer than is necessary. The jewel calls to me, and though I would not answer the call, it is insistent. So I will take my leave of you, and leave you with my thanks.” Maedhros looked expectantly at Beren.

“Your knife you shall have when you are safely over my threshold,” Beren said.

“A wise precaution,” Maedhros conceded, and turned to the door. 

True to her word, Beren passed her her knife through the cracked door before closing it firmly and locking in tight. Dawn was yet a few hours off, but the entire length of Gelion and then some awaited her, and the distance would be no shorter in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) In case you didn't pick up on it, Beren is a trans woman in this story.   
> 2) Also yes I used they pronouns for Finrod. Finrod is nb, it says so in silm, and who am i to argue with canon.  
> 3) I hope everyone appreciates the level of bias with which Mae is operating here. She is not a reliable narrator of these two's character for what should be obvious reasons.  
> 4) Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it, but feel free to let me know if you didn't.


End file.
